Dspace-Cris not Searching Patrons

[Philmon Chigwagwa]

I have successifully installed dspace 5.x cris over and existingd dspace 5.3 instance. Everything else is working but it is faining to search for epeople is giving internal error message. Here is the log error

java.lang.NullPointerException
        at org.dspace.eperson.EPerson.search(EPerson.java:359)
        at org.dspace.eperson.EPerson.search(EPerson.java:267)
        at org.dspace.app.webui.servlet.admin.EPersonListServlet.doDSGet(EPersonListServlet.java:85)
        at org.dspace.app.webui.servlet.DSpaceServlet.processRequest(DSpaceServlet.java:119)
        at org.dspace.app.webui.servlet.DSpaceServlet.doGet(DSpaceServlet.java:67)
        at javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:655)
        at javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:764)
        at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.internalDoFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:227)
        at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.doFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:162)
        at org.apache.tomcat.websocket.server.WsFilter.doFilter(WsFilter.java:53)
        at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.internalDoFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:189)
        at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.doFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:162)
        at org.dspace.app.webui.filter.RegisteredOnlyFilter.doFilter(RegisteredOnlyFilter.java:66)
        at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.internalDoFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:189)
        at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.doFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:162)
        at org.dspace.utils.servlet.DSpaceWebappServletFilter.doFilter(DSpaceWebappServletFilter.java:78)
        at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.internalDoFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:189)
        at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.doFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:162)
        at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardWrapperValve.invoke(StandardWrapperValve.java:197)
        at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContextValve.invoke(StandardContextValve.java:97)
        at org.apache.catalina.authenticator.AuthenticatorBase.invoke(AuthenticatorBase.java:541)
        at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardHostValve.invoke(StandardHostValve.java:135)
        at org.apache.catalina.valves.ErrorReportValve.invoke(ErrorReportValve.java:92)
        at org.apache.catalina.valves.AbstractAccessLogValve.invoke(AbstractAccessLogValve.java:687)
        at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardEngineValve.invoke(StandardEngineValve.java:78)
        at org.apache.catalina.connector.CoyoteAdapter.service(CoyoteAdapter.java:360)
        at org.apache.coyote.http11.Http11Processor.service(Http11Processor.java:399)
        at org.apache.coyote.AbstractProcessorLight.process(AbstractProcessorLight.java:65)
        at org.apache.coyote.AbstractProtocol$ConnectionHandler.process(AbstractProtocol.java:889)
        at org.apache.tomcat.util.net.NioEndpoint$SocketProcessor.doRun(NioEndpoint.java:1743)
        at org.apache.tomcat.util.net.SocketProcessorBase.run(SocketProcessorBase.java:49)
        at org.apache.tomcat.util.threads.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:1191)
        at org.apache.tomcat.util.threads.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:659)
        at org.apache.tomcat.util.threads.TaskThread$WrappingRunnable.run(TaskThread.java:61)
        at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:750)

Can someone please assist.